Tag Archives: #Readthis

…let me state straight off the bat…I have an excellent, conscientious, hard-slogging agent in my corner…he has the ear (and prob’ly other bits of their anatomy) of some of the prime publishing houses in Noo Yawk, ‘Merica… but even with his tenacity, my little crime thriller babies, THE VIOLIN MAN’S LEGACY and VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK…are still flyin’ solo in the self publishing jungle that is Amazon Kindle…don’t get me wrong… I’m not dissatisfied with the download totals thus far (55,000+ now, and risin’)… but I’ve long since distanced myself from the stool next to the telephone… no waiting for Publisher Godots to call… for once in my life, I’ve been following all the sage proper advice on how to ‘keep hangin’ in there and doin’ all the right things’ in the meantime… ‘building the platform’–DONE… ‘interacting with readers and EMB’DY who’ll talk to me’–DONE… ‘self printed paperback copies and distributed them locally to the book chains myself’–DONE… ‘got magazine and newspaper column inches about the novels and my own back story’–DONE… ‘become the media tart of the guest speaker circuit to readers groups and associations’–DONE-–so, what’s missing from this picture??…yup, PRINCE(ESS) PUBLISHER… conspicuous by his/her absence… yes, I know, I know, I know… authoring’s the kind of vocation where ye become an overnight success after 40 years hard labour… still, ye have to wonder…is there anybody out there?… hello?… if any of you wunnerful lads and lassies scribers have the Chinese Sign on any publishers ye know ( blackmail photos, extortion, all acceptable )… nudge them this way , won’t you?… ta muchly …I’ve a sneaky suspicion it might be something to do with Matron…oops, she’s gallivanting this way with that huge syringe… see yeez later…

…for years I never questioned the advertisements…yer favourite brand of washing powder, Mabel… ‘NEW AND IMPROVED’ they crowed…but not just one year, but the next… and the next…and the one after that…so I kinda set to thinkin’…after thirty years of NEW AND IMPROVED powder EVERY year for three decades…how bluudy awful was the stuff when they started out?…for the cognoscenti of the literary arts, this is gonna make a bit of sense…(trust me)…take a novel that ye’ve just written…then ye start to edit…it improves (ye hope)…and then ye dabble with it again…and again…and yet again…bits of narrative here…scraps of dialogue there…too many adverbs…overuse of certain phrases and words…the ubiquitous excessive indulgence in the word ‘that’… and so it goes on…I’ve had long-established grandees in the scribblers profession share with me, that sometimes they think they can NEVER edit enough…this last two months I have spent doing precisely what the people I admire most in this industry do…a line-by-blood-sweat-and-tears-line edit of my first two babies, THE VIOLIN MAN’S LEGACY and VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK…don’t get me wrong… I’m still DELIGHTED with the original versions, authorial narcissist that I am…(50,000+ downloads tells me at least SOME people agree with me)… but the gratification of immersion in each and every page to seek to improve is incalculable…I highly recommend it…there are those of you who have supported my own efforts here for the last 18 months… and others astonishingly who have asked my humble advice on writing as a debut indie…lads and lassies, SERIOUS EDITING is the way to go…the ‘NEW AND IMPROVED’ tag line’s what ye seek…go hunt it down…meantime , a wee reminder— VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK is on Kindle Free Promo Jan24-28 this week…pick it up here :

…truth in advertising…an oft-hackneyed phrase I’m sure most of us would agree…my ol’ Gran’pa used to say, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time…or was that sumb’dy else?…whatever…so, cards on the table, ‘fess up time, no Bull Sh*t…this ‘ere blog post is targetting one thing, and one thing only …to get ye all NOT to dip into yer pockets, but to download FOR FREE my novel, VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK…now, Mabel, if the good folks out there in BlogLand feel inclined to BUY the other book, THE VIOLIN MAN’S LEGACY at the same time as whippin’ away a freebie???…in all conscience, who am I to stop ‘em ?…and if they wanna dig further and push out some pennies and cents on my (critics say) brilliantly funny collection of blog posts, THE BLOGGER’S GUIDE TO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING (more truth in advertising! )…be my guest…the Freebie promo STARTS JANUARY 24TH Western Pacific time (so don’t download before that, or yer wallet WILL get sapped)…all the way until JANUARY 28th…please enjoy…the links are as follow for :